1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a cutter, and more particularly to a utility cutter comprising a blade replacement arrangement which allows convenient and safe replacement of cutter blades for the utility cutter.
2. Description of Related Arts
A conventional cutter for artistic cutting purposes usually comprises an elongated cutter body having a receiving cavity and a front opening communicating with the receiving cavity, a cutter blade having a sharp cutting portion for cutting an object, and an actuation arrangement coupled with the cutter body for actuating the cutter blade to move between a idle position and a cutting position, wherein in the cutting position, the cutter blade is driven by the actuation arrangement to receive in the receiving cavity, wherein in the cutting position, the actuation arrangement is drive to slidably push the sharp cutting portion of the cutter blade out of the receiving cavity via the front opening for cutting an object.
For this kind of conventional cutter, there exist several mechanisms by which a sharpness of the cutter blade is to be maintained so as to ensure that the cutter can discharge good cutting performance. For example, a plurality of cutting routes are spacedly formed on the cutter blade so that when the cutting portion is blunt, a user is able to conveniently break the cutter blade along the corresponding cutting route for replacing the old cutting portion with a new sharp cutting portion formed by breaking the cutter blade along the cutting route.
In order to replace the cutter blade, the conventional cutter usually further comprises a cover lid detachably mounted on a rear portion of the cutter body for detachably enclosing the receiving cavity. Thus, when a user wishes to replace the cutter blade, he or she has to detach the cover lid from the cutter body, remove the old cutter blade from the receiving cavity, and put a new cutter blade into the receiving cavity for allowing the new cutter blade to engage with the actuation arrangement.
There exist several problems with this kind of conventional utility cutter. First and foremost, in order to replace the cutter blade, the user has to open the cover lid and pull the cutter blade out from the receiving cavity. Very often, the cutter blade is engaged with the actuation arrangement so that the user has to pull out the actuation arrangement as well before he or she can remove the old cutter blade. Although the cutter blade would have been blunt at the time the replacement is performed, it is nevertheless sharp enough to easily hurt the user's hands, especially when the user has to touch the edge of the cutter blade in order to pull it out.
Second, since the operation of the conventional cutter depends much on the sliding actuation by the actuation arrangement, the cutter body is usually elongated in shape. In certain circumstances, the elongated shape of the cutter body brings inconvenience to the user. Moreover, the sliding motion of the cutter blade may be accidentally actuated by other objects so that the user may notice that the cutting portion of the cutter blade has already been pushed out of the cutter body. This may cause accidental injury to user's hands or to others who come into contact with the cutter.
As a matter of fact, there exist foldable knives in which the blades are capable of folding towards the corresponding handle frames so as to reduce the entire foldable knife into a compact structure. However, this kind of foldable knife is only meant for outdoor use and they are in no sense cutters as mentioned above.